Google’s 5 Pillars of Success

Updated March 4, 2025

The Fifth Column

Building consistent content is tough. Sometimes it’s good to get a refresher on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, so when we saw that Google has outlined the 5 pillars of success needed to make a good app we were interested. But how can these pillars be applied to making good content for your website?

Solid Foundations

The five principles that Google suggests you consider are:

• Be clear about who you are
• Be intuitive and reliable
• Don’t stand still, but don’t run too fast
• Be part of the ecosystem
• Personalize

These five principles can help you focus your content and keep users coming back to your site for more information. So let’s break them down step by step.

Be Clear About Who You Are

You can’t write about everything. You need a focus. Unless you have a team of 10+ writers you need to pick something to write about. Ideally, that thing will also be related to areas of your business. Then you need to make it obvious that you will be writing about that topic for the foreseeable future. And that leads us to the next point.

Be Intuitive and Reliable

The biggest thing in content is being reliable. A steady stream of articles is better than ten in one week and none for the next three months. Build up a flow and users will know when to check back in with your site to see what’s going on. It will also have a knock-on effect on your SEO, and you’ll find your site being crawled more often.

Don’t Stand Still, Don’t Run Too Fast

There are a number of ways to interpret this point. We’ve taken it to mean that you should always be looking for new ideas and new information to wow your readers. You can’t just regurgitate the same old stuff, especially since Google indexes selectively to choose what is unique and valuable. If you’re learning new and interesting things, then you will create new and interesting content. Always be learning and you’ll always be moving forward.

Part of the Ecosystem

Finding your tribe (LINK) is important for a number of reasons but finding it isn’t enough. You should be part of it. Following influencers is one thing, but interacting with them is so much better. You’ll learn more quickly and become part of something bigger. One great way to create high-quality content is collaborating with other influencers, so build relationships, and then you can build things together. Interact on social media, forums, and live events to build ties in your industry.

Personalize

Again, this step doesn’t directly relate to content, but we have adapted it to mean “speak to your audience” make sure you know who they are, and personalize the content for them. That doesn’t mean you need to include their name at the top of a post, but rather you need to think about who they are and why they’re getting information from YOUR website. That perspective will help you create something that seems as if it is tailored for them personally.

Five Pillars

These five thoughts can help you create really good content that will last the test of time. How do you continue to wow visitors to your website with engaging content? We’d love to hear what you think about writing in 2018.